Minneapolis Lakers coach John Kundla, top, is hoisted up by players and carried to their dressing room April 25, 1952, after beating the New York Knickerbockers 82-65 to win their fourth NBA basketball championship in five years. (AP Photo, File)

John Kundla talks to a reporter Thursday, June 5, 2014, in his home at MainStreet Lodge assisted living home in Minneapolis, where he says he is as lucky at bingo as he once was in pro basketball. (Pioneer Press: John Autey)

The modest Kundla says he also was “lucky” when it came to winning NBA championships, but most observers believe that hardly was the case. He was regarded as a keen tactician while steering the Lakers to wins in 1949 and 1950 before later becoming the first NBA coach to win three straight during a 1952-54 run.

Now, Kundla is seeing his name back in the news. If Erik Spoelstra can lead the Miami Heat to victory in the NBA Finals against the San Antonio Spurs, he will become just the fourth coach in league history to win three in a row. The other two are Red Auerbach, who once won eight straight for Boston, and Phil Jackson, who accomplished the trifecta twice for Chicago and once for the Los Angeles Lakers.

If it’s a win by the Spurs, who lead the series 1-0 entering Sunday’s Game 2, Kundla would be joined in another exclusive group. San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich would become just the fifth NBA coach to win five or more titles, joining Jackson (11), Auerbach (nine) and Pat Riley, tied with Kundla at five.

“After (more than) 50 years, I’d say that’s pretty nice that they still remember me,” said Kundla, speaking while watching Thursday’s Game 1 of the Finals on television in his MainStreet Lodge room.

Riley, now Miami’s team president, actually trademarked the term “three-peat,” before his Los Angeles Lakers fell short of getting one in 1989. Spoelstra can make his boss some bucks if the Heat win and the term is plastered all over T-shirts.

But don’t think Kundla would be paying much attention to that. Just as nobody was dunking back when he coached, no one was talking about a three-peat.

“(That term) doesn’t mean anything to me,” Kundla said. “It’s just a modern way of talking. We didn’t call it anything. We just tried to go out there and win.”

LAKER POWER

That’s exactly what his Lakers did. Led by dominant center George Mikan, they were the NBA’s first great team. But Kundla’s first Lakers title actually came in another league.

Minneapolis won the National Basketball League crown in 1948 before the Lakers later that year joined the Basketball Association of America, the forerunner of the NBA, and won the 1949 championship. The NBA was formed in 1949 and recognized Kundla’s BAA title but not his NBL one.

Had the Lakers’ 1948 championship counted in NBA lore, Kundla would have two three-peats. Of course, he wouldn’t call them that.

Kundla said it doesn’t matter to him that he has just five titles listed in the record book. He prefers to give credit to his players even if they give plenty of it to him.

“We had a good ballclub, and John was able to get us to play as a unit,” said Whitey Skoog, a guard who was on Kundla’s final three championship teams and is retired in St. Peter, Minn. “He was very easy to play for. He was very calm and wouldn’t get all over you if you didn’t do something, but would explain it to you.”

During their NBA three-peat, the Lakers had five eventual hall of famers. Mikan, forwards Vern Mikkelsen and Jim Pollard and guard Slater Martin were around for all three, and center Clyde Lovellette joined the team as a rookie for the final one.

Now, two teams with plenty of future hall of famers are dueling in the Finals. The Heat feature LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and Ray Allen, while the Spurs have Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili.

Kundla is looking on with interest. In what he predicts will be a close series, he believes the Heat eventually will triumph.

“I’m expecting Miami to win because they’ve got James,” Kundla said. “He can shoot and rebound. I can’t believe how high he gets. He’s an unbelievable ballplayer. There isn’t anything he can’t do.”

Kundla generally was complimentary about what he saw in Game 1. He lauded the fundamentals of Duncan and the driving ability of Parker. However, he didn’t quite know what to make of Chris “Birdman” Andersen, the Heat’s heavily tattooed center.

“To me, tattoos mean temporary insanity,” said Kundla, who can’t recall ever having a player with one.

Kundla watches games from the perspective of a coach. He has paid close attention the past few years to what Spoelstra has been doing and likes what he sees.

“I think he’s doing a good job,” Kundla said. “I was watching one game and they passed the ball and all five players were moving at the same time. You can see they’re well-coached.”

While Spoelstra has a chance to join Kundla on a short list of coaches with a three-peat, he admits he doesn’t know much about the former coach other than having heard his name. However, he vows to read up on him.

KUNDLA’S ROOTS

If Spoelstra really wants to go back far, he will see Kundla was born July 3, 1916, in Star Junction, Pa., outside Pittsburgh. His father, John Kundla Sr., was a coal miner and steel worker who was born in Slovakia.

Kundla moved with his mother, Anna, who was born in Austria, to Minneapolis when he was 5, and his father eventually was supposed to join them. He never did. So Kundla, who spoke only Slovak until he got to Minnesota, would be raised by his mother.

Kundla has lived in the Twin Cities for nearly 93 years. He was a star forward at the University of Minnesota and a decade later was the coach at St. Thomas in 1946-47.

He coached the Lakers from 1947-59 and the University of Minnesota from 1959-68. Kundla had a chance to join the Lakers after they moved to Los Angeles in 1960 but said he’s “not a Hollywood guy.”

When Kundla was coaching Minneapolis, he made $6,000 a year. That’s 1/10th of a percent of the $6 million a year Jackson was pulling down while coaching the Lakers to the NBA’s last three-peat in 2000-02.

“If I had all that money, I wouldn’t know what to do with it,” Kundla said.

Inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1995, Kundla was just 51 when he retired from coaching because it was “tough losing those close ones.” He’s spent his 46 years in retirement making sure he stays in shape.

“I say I look like a million bucks. I’m only 97,” Kundla said when asked about being the oldest living hall of famer. “I’ve surprised myself. I’m in good health. I was a physical education teacher (when starting out). I owe it all to the gym, to exercise. I still get on a stationary bike and ride 15 minutes every day.

“I do forget people’s names sometimes and sometimes I’ll forget things, like making coffee, I’ll put the water in and then forget the coffee. Little things like that irritate you.”

Kundla spends most of his time in a wheelchair but is sometimes able to use a walker. Asked about Kundla’s age, Skoog, 87, joked, “I’m a young guy compared to him.”

Kundla’s wife, Marie, died in 2007. The couple had six children, one of whom is deceased. Among Kundla’s grandchildren are former Michigan State player Isaiah Dahlman, former Wofford player Noah Dahlman and Rebekah Dahlman, Minnesota’s all-time leading girls and boys high school scorer at Braham who is now with the Vanderbilt women’s team.

Kundla has outlived most of the players from his championship days. There are just 10 surviving players left from any of his title teams, with only Skoog, Bob Harrison and Pep Saul still alive among the seven who were with the Lakers each season during their 1952-54 three-peat.

HE COACHED THE GREATS

Only Mikan and Pollard were on all of Kundla’s championship teams, including the one in the NBL. The 6-foot-10 Mikan, a three-time scoring champion, was the NBA’s first big star.

“George Mikan was the Babe Ruth of basketball,” Kundla said. “I was just lucky to have him and so many great players.”

When asked to name the highlight of his career, Kundla doesn’t hesitate. It was beating the New York Knicks in seven games in win the crown in 1952.

A picture was taken after the final game of Kundla being carried on Mikan’s shoulders. It sits framed on a table in his room.

A year later, the Lakers beat the Knicks in the Finals in five games. By then, Kundla was becoming a bit of a celebrity.

“After we won the (1953) championship in New York, we got to watch the Yankees and we were introduced to Casey Stengel and Yogi Berra,” Kundla said. “Then we went on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show.’ Mikan and his wife (Patricia) and my wife and I, we sat in the crowd and they put a camera on us and introduced us.”

Kundla became big enough that he was one of the few guys who dared give the legendary Auerbach a hard time. Auerbach became well known for smoking victory cigars while leading the Celtics to titles in the late 1950s and 1960s.

“Those cigars irritated me,” Kundla said. “I said to him once, ‘You still smoking those dirty cigars?’ He didn’t like that.”

After all these years, Kundla still gets some celebrity treatment. He receives at least five pieces of mail each week in which fans enclose items to be autographed. Kundla always signs while his son Jim helps him out with the paperwork.

As part of the NBA’s 50th-anniversary celebration in 1997, Kundla was named one of the 10 top coaches in league history. He finished with a 423-302 BAA and NBA record but never won another Finals following Mikan’s initial retirement in 1954. Mikan did come back to play in 1955-56 but no longer was dominant.

“John coached one of the greatest front lines in NBA history in Mikan, Mikkelsen and Pollard, and we had a great backcourt player in Martin,” said Lovellette, now retired in North Manchester, Ind. “John was kind of a psychologist, being able to keep all of those players happy playing as a team. I think that’s what made him a great coach.”

Lovellette, with the Lakers from 1953-57, said Kundla was well liked by his players even if he took their money.

“He was all business when it was time for business, but he also was a friend and a buddy,” Lovellette said. “He would sit and play cards with us on the train. We played poker all the time. He was good. He could read the cards. He didn’t take a lot of our money because it was sort of a cheap game. But he took our nickels and dimes.”

That figured. Whether it’s basketball, poker or bingo, Kundla long has been a winner.

Chris joined the Pioneer Press in 2013 to cover the Vikings. He was a longtime NBA writer with the Akron Beacon Journal, Rocky Mountain News and AOL FanHouse. Before coming to Minnesota, he covered the Miami Heat and Dolphins for Fox Sports. Chris has won six awards in the past three Pro Football Writers of America contests. Chris is a graduate of Northwestern University, where he spent his college years watching the losingest team in the history of Division I-A football.

As you comment, please be respectful of other commenters and other viewpoints. Our goal with article comments is to provide a space for civil, informative and constructive conversations. We reserve the right to remove any comment we deem to be defamatory, rude, insulting to others, hateful, off-topic or reckless to the community. See our full terms of use here.

More in Sports

Falling behind used to be a nuisance for the Minnesota Wild before it became a crisis, a trend that is pushing them further out of playoff contention as the season grinds to the Christmas milepost. San Jose scored twice in a 29-second span midway through the second period to break open a tight game and send the...

In the midst of the best season of his career, Vikings defensive end Danielle Hunter has been named to Pro Bowl for the first time in his career. He highlights the Vikings’ Pro Bowl selections, which also include linebacker Anthony Barr, safety Harrison Smith and wide receiver Adam Thielen.

Joe Mauer walked up to the podium at his alma mater and said one word, in the most Joe Mauer way. "Wow," he said. Everyone knew the Minnesota Twins were going to retire the No. 7 at some point. The all-star, MVP, batting champ and maybe one-day Hall of Famer deserved as much. But how would they do it? The...

Gophers football assistant coach Marcus West was skeptical he would be able to recruit defensive tackle Rashad Cheney out of the state of Georgia. But during a visit to Cedar Grove High School outside Atlanta, Cheney’s head coach Jermaine Smith assured West there was a distinct chance the Gophers could net the four-star recruit, who had pledged to the Georgia...

Moments after the completion of the National Anthem prior tothe Timberwolves' win over Sacramento on Monday night, rookie Josh Okogie ran to the hoop, jumped up and did a pull-up on the rim. It’s the type of action that comes as no surprise to his teammates. “He’s literally like that, it could be on the plane at two in the morning, it...